Revelation--The Letter of Julia

It must be remembered, that, in all this time--amidst all my
agonies--my feelings of destitution and despair--I had few or no
doubts of the guilt of Julia Clifford. My sufferings arose from
the love which I had felt--the defeat of my hopes and fortune--the
long struggle of conflicting feelings, mortified pride, and disappointed
enjoyment. Excited by the melancholy spectacle before me--beholding
the form of her, once so beautiful--still so beautiful--whom I had
loved with such an absorbing passion--whom I could not cease to
love--suddenly cut off from life--her voice, which was so musical,
suddenly hushed for ever--the tides of her heart suddenly stopped--and
all the sweet waters of hope dried up in her bosom, and turned
into bitterness and blight in mine--the force of my feelings got
the better of my reason, and cruel and oppressive doubts of the
justness of her doom overpowered my soul.

But, with the subsiding
of my emotions, under the stern feeling of resolve which came to my
relief, and which my course of education enabled me to maintain,
my persuasions of her guilt were resumed, and I naturally recurred
to the conclusions which had originally justified me to myself, in
inflicting the awful punishment of death upon her. But I was soon
to be deprived of this justification--to be subjected to the terrible
recoil of all my feelings of justice, love, honor and manliness,
in the new and overwhelming conviction, not only that I had
been premature, but that she was innocent!--innocent, equally of
thought and deed, which could incur tire reproach of impurity, or
the punishment of guilt.